CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“Hold it upward, not outward.”
The Spirit Spear pulsed with a restless energy that crawled up my arm, the black wood cold against my palm.
I tried to focus on the crystal tip, but my eyes kept snagging on the steady movement of Talon’s throat as he spoke.
Before I could adjust my grip, Talon stepped forward and pulled the spear cleanly from my hands.
The crystalline head ignited the moment it left my grasp. Pale light spilled across his face, carving the sharp planes of his features into something severe and almost inhuman. The shadows beneath his cheekbones deepened, giving him the unsettling stillness of a statue cut from mountain stone.
“The spirits seek height,” he said, rotating the weapon. “When you thrust it forward, you scatter them. You treat it like a blade when it is meant to be a channel.”
“Again,” he commanded, pressing the wood back into my grip.
I lifted the spear.
“Upward,” he corrected immediately. “Straighten your shoulders. You stand as though you are bracing for it to strike you.”
“It is heavier than it looks,” I muttered.
It was a lie. The spear weighed almost nothing. It was the feeling of Talon stepping behind me that made my knees weak.
“Do not lock your knees,” he murmured, his breath a warm current against my neck. His hands settled on my hips—firm and searing through my shirt—as he forced my feet wider, dictating my balance. “Be empty, Kaelia, so they can fill you.”
I drew a slow breath, letting the wall in my mind crumble.
The Spirit Spear answered with a surge so violent it felt like a physical rushing of water through my veins.
Smoky silver light erupted from the crystal, twisting through the cavern air in slick, oil-sheen spirals that pulsed in time with my own racing heart.
A low rumble of satisfaction vibrated from Talon’s chest, pressing directly into my spine. He did not pull away. Instead, his lips grazed the line of my jaw as the spirits circled us in a silent, glowing vortex.
When I glanced up, I found his face much closer than I had expected, his gaze fixed on the spirits as they moved through the cavern air.
“They are bound to me,” he said quietly. “But they will follow your soul to the ends of the earth.”
His hand slid over mine where it held the spear, his thumb moving slowly across my knuckles.
“Command them,” he urged.
I leaned slightly back into him before I realized what I was doing and closed my eyes, picturing the farthest corner of the cave.
The spirits reacted instantly.
They surged forward together, their drifting shapes tightening into a single rushing current of shadowed light. For one brief heartbeat they flooded the darkest edge of the cavern, illuminating rough stone that had likely not seen light in centuries.
Then, just as quickly, they collapsed inward.
The swirling shapes folded neatly back into the spear’s crystal head, the light fading until only the quiet hum of power remained in the wood beneath my hands.
Talon turned me slowly to face him. His fingers rose to my cheek, tracing the curve of my cheekbone.
“Amazing,” he whispered, his thumb brushing the curve of my bottom lip.
The heat in my chest shifted and coiled lower. My hand lifted without thought as my fingers traced the firm planes of his abdomen through the thin fabric of his shirt. I moved to slide the spear into the leather at his hip, but my palm stayed against him.
Threading my finger through the loop of his trousers, I tugged him closer, inviting the collision.
Talon’s mouth found mine with a bruising demand that scorched the air from my lungs. My breath left me in a quiet gasp, lost beneath the unrelenting pressure of his lips. My hands rose, tangling in the heavy silk of his hair to anchor myself as the cavern floor seemed to tilt beneath my feet.
I needed the contact—the rough, possessive weight of him—to drown out the world I had burned down to reach this moment.
Talon’s arms closed around me the moment my fingers tightened in his hair. He lifted me from the stone floor and I wrapped my legs around his waist, pulling him closer to erase the last space between us.
I had skipped undergarments in my haste to wash, leaving me bare and achingly aware of every brush against me.
Heat pooled between my thighs, the moisture impossible to hide as it stained the cotton of his shirt.
A rough sound escaped him against my mouth and his grip tightened beneath my thighs, anchoring me to him as he carried me across the cavern.
The furs of the raised platform sank beneath my back when he lowered me onto them.
My legs remained locked around his waist, holding him in place while the heat between us continued to build until it felt almost unbearable.
He shifted above me, the firm weight of his body pressing exactly where I had begun to ache for more.
“You are soaking me, Kaelia.”
The flush on my cheeks deepened, yet shame failed to find me.
My hands tightened in the cloth of his shirt and tugged insistently, needing the barrier gone.
Talon mirrored my urgency, lifting his arms so my fingers could drag the fabric over the hard, carved lines of his chest. I bundled the cotton and tossed it into the shadows, leaving nothing but the heat of his bare skin against my palms.
I traced the curve of a tattoo on his forearm, and the sudden, sharp intake of his breath was the only sound in the cavern.
His head dipped down, his mouth tracing the curve of my jaw before his lips found the sensitive skin beneath my ear. The slow trail of warmth continued downward along my throat, each touch unhurried, and devastating in its patience.
My head tipped back against the furs as the softest sound escaped me.
Talon’s hand slid along my side, his palm spanning the curve of my waist before anchoring at the line of my thigh. His grip tightened as he lifted my leg higher around his waist, drawing me so close that he pressed directly into my core.
His hand pulled at the hem of my shirt and tugged upward. I lifted my arms and let him pull the fabric away, the cotton whispering against my skin before he discarded it into the dark.
My hands instinctively crossed over my chest, my eyes looking away.
But before I could hide, his hands closed around my wrists. He guided my arms outward, pinning them gently against the furs beside my head and leaving me entirely exposed to the blue glow of the cavern.
“Never hide yourself from me,” he murmured. “No magic could ever hold a candle to your beauty, little flame.”
I could not hide the way I reacted to his proximity. My body seemed to seek the very heat it had been denied for a lifetime, my chest lifting as I pressed further into the solid weight of him.
Talon’s eyes darkened at the movement. His mouth lowered again, tracing a slow, burning path along my collarbone until his lips found the soft swell of my breast.
His eyes locked onto mine as his lips closed over my nipple, his tongue swirling with relentless devotion.
A broken sound escaped me, and my hands slipped downward, searching blindly for the waistband of his trousers
The fabric shifted beneath my fingers while Talon moved to help me, though his mouth never strayed far from my skin.
I hooked my thumbs into the elastic, dragging it down inch by inch until my fingers could go no further. Leaning back slightly, he tugged them the rest of the way, freeing himself fully, the thick length of him springing free.
My eyes locked on him hungrily.
The ridges of his abdomen narrowed into a sharp V, drawing my eyes lower, where his erection stood proud and unrelenting.
Ink swirled across his thighs, spilling over the planes of his hips until it framed the thick, veined shaft rising from the base.
The flushed crown glistened with a bead of arousal, the slick sheen trailing down to rest just above the taut plane of his stomach.
Talon’s eyes dropped from mine, following the trajectory of my stare. The moment he realized where my attention had lingered, a growl tore from his chest.
He shifted, pressing closer until the hard length of him brushed the sensitive inside of my thigh. His hand moved between us then, his fingers brushing gently over the sensitive place that had been aching for his touch since the moment his mouth had first claimed mine.
His thumb found my nub and pressed, causing my legs to tighten around him.
“Tell me what you want.”
His thumb traced a slow circle that sent another shiver through me.
My heels dug into the hard muscle of his backside, urging him closer in response.
“Tell me, little flame,” he rasped.
I reached down, my hand trembling as I wrapped it around the thick base of his shaft. The velvety heat of him pulsed against my palm, the vein thrumming beneath my grip as I guided him until the rigid head pressed against my entrance.
His gaze dropped, fixed intently on the place where I held him. A rough hand closed over mine, his fingers tightening with mine around his length. Together, we slid him through my slick folds, his crown catching against my swollen nub and circling.
I moaned as he pressed forward slightly, the blunt tip teasing at my entrance. But then he pulled back, replacing himself with a finger that stroked through my wetness. He lifted the glistening digit to his lips, sucking it clean while watching me.
“So sweet,” he murmured.
A strangled sound tore from my throat as I caught his wrist, dragging his hand back down. “Stop toying with me.”
His head tilted slightly as he obliged, sinking a thick digit into my aching heat. The sudden intrusion had my stomach tensing instantly as my inner walls clenched tight around him.
Every nerve in my body flared awake at the foreign pressure and a quiet sound escaped me before I could stop it.
Talon’s gaze darkened.